Saluting the Land Girls

As surviving members of the Women's Land Army celebrate the news they are to receive official recognition, the Gazette & Herald salutes the part they played in feeding the nation during the Second World War.

While Hitler was trying to starve the nation into submission, young women milked, ploughed, threshed and toiled from morning until night as the countryside was drained of its male workforce.

Along with members of the Women's Timber Corps, former Womens' Land Army members will finally, in the new year, be able to apply for a special commorative badge to mark their service to the nation.

Although disbanded in 1950, memories of the 'forgotten army' live on and it is thought that 20,000 'Land Girls' survive, including many in Ryedale.

Reporters LYNN BROWN and DAVID JEFFELS bring you their stories.

MORE than 60 years has passed since former Land Girl Lady Denys Pain tried to save a farm worker called Eddie from a raging bull, but the memory is clearly still painful for the octogenarian.

Despite her playful manner and sharp wit, the pensioner, who lives at Eddlethorpe Hall, near Malton, recalls the event with dry hilarity but for a long time blamed herself for his death.

Despite being presented with a medal for risking her life, the tearful teenager threw it away believing a doctor when he told her the dying man she pulled from the attacking animal had been killed by a glass of water she had given him.

"Still to this day I believe that man Eddie was a perfect fool, " she said.

"He had the bull on the end of a staff but instead of pushing the beast away from him he pulled it down. I heard his terrifying screams as it was goring his body against a wall and I used the pointed end of the brush I was using at the time to poke the animal in the eye.

"I pushed the poor man, who was barely conscious, into the diary and as I ran I could feel the bull's hot breath on my bottom. Thankfully the bull saw the cows outside and his attention was diverted to other more romantic thoughts.

"Eddie lay there whispering 'water, water' and I thought I had done a wonderful thing when I ran to get him a drink. When the doctor arrived he asked if he had had anything to drink. I chirped that I had given him some water to which he replied 'that will surely kill him'. Five days later he was dead."

The 83-year-old joined the Land Army on her 18th birthday and looked after the cart horses on an estate five miles away from her childhood home in Cheshire.

Working alongside another girl, Peggy, the pair would bike to the farm to start work every day at 5am to milk the cows, which were the oldest established herd of Freisans in the country.

Despite her natural ability with horses, the owner of the estate and army captain put the teenager through her paces before he took her on.

"Horses were easy meat for me because I had always ridden, " she said.

"But the captain told me that I would be no good for him if I didn't know the name of every cow in the herd - it would mean I wasn't observant.

"Thankfully the cows had their names printed on the stalls and very quickly I got to know every animal.

One day he pointed to Rosie and asked me her name. Of course I knew it and he was satisfied so I must have passed what was his last test."

And her escapade with an stampeding bull wasn't the Land Girl's only brush with death during her days on the farm.

When one of her beloved cart horses died they bought a replacement, who proved to be less compatible with life in the country.

"The grey mare Flower had to be destroyed, which was very upseting, " she said. "Of course we couldn't work with just one horse so we bought another from Leeds which had been pulling the dustcarts until the city authority decided to use motor vehicles.

"We had it pulling a haymaker but it must have been spooked by the loud noises and it set off on a gallop with me bobbing up and down on the seat of the machine. I was crying and I thought I was going to die and fall under the machine.

"Luckily a farmer heard my cries for help and he knew what he was doing when he grabbed the horse. Mummy was furious.

My brother had just been killed in the war and the thought of losing me was just too much."

Speaking from the kitchen of her beloved home, the elderly lady, who despite her various ailments still keeps a flock organic hens, is looking forward to receiving official recognition for the work she and others did on the Home Front.

"The last medal I had I threw in the dustbin, " she added.

"My husband fought in the war and was awarded the Military Cross which he wore on Remembrance Day. If I make it to next year before I finally pack up I will look rather grand in church with a medal all of my own."

AS a schoolgirl Vera Hutchinson dreamed of being a nanny but when war broke out she along with thousands of others joined the Women's Land Army.

Now sitting in the front room of her Settrington bungalow the pensioner laughs: "It's funny how things turn out. I ended up with pigs instead of kids."

When she joined the Land Army as a fresh-faced 17-year-old she ploughed the fields with a team of cart horses, milked cows by hand and showed her male counterparts she was more than capable of hard work, despite getting paid half the wage of a male labourer.

She worked as a farm hand until she was 60 when surgery forced a career change - working as a carer for the elderly.

"It was hard work but we knew nothing else. I don't think young people would do it nowadays, " said the 81-year-old.

"I loved working on the land and I have always got on better with men - which was a good job really.

"At that age I was what you would call skinny and the men would say 'Tha'll be killed with all that work'. I could do anything them men could do. They got paid £9 a week when I got £4 - even they said it should be 't'other way round'.

Memories of hard work and deep snow

LIKE many young women who joined the Women's Land Army, June Pringle stayed in Ryedale, married and had a family.

But as well as spending three years working on the land, initially at Arkengarthdale, then Stokesley and later in the shadow of the White Horse at Kilburn, she spent two years catching rats and moles on farmland.

Now she is putting her experiences of 60-plus years ago down in writing after being encouraged by the Imperial War Museum in London where some of her memorabilia is to be found.

She recalls how her day started at 6am with milking by hand, which at harvest and hay-making was followed by a long day in the fields before the night time milking session at 8pm.

Mrs Pringle worked with the big Clydesdale horses. "I had to stand on a box to put on the harness and tackle because of their height!"

She met her husband, Arthur, when he was the bus driver at Kilburn. "We courted for four years before we got married, " said Mrs Pringle, now 81.

They lived for 30 years in Pickering where she had a guest house, and for the past 26 years has lived in Kirkbymoorside.

Her most vivid memories of her Land Army days were of being in the harvest field. "We had good food, and it was lovely, especially at night, to see a field with its neat rows of corn stooks under a moonlit sky. I have a lot of happy memories of those days."

One of those memories is of severe winters and deep snow. "We used to snuggle up to the cows when we milked them to keep warm."

She remembers how the pilots of Spitfires would fly low over the fields and wave to the Land Army girls.

But while other services were given a uniform, the Land Army was issued with a top coat, jumper and a pair of shoes and got no money when they left the service. "We always felt we were the hardest worked force but the least recognised. We were taking the place of the men who were fighting the war - we kept the country in food."

She was paid £1 a week of which half was sent home and a shilling a week was spent on a hired bike to get to work.

At just over 16 she was one of the youngest to join the Land Army and her career has attracted the interest of the Imperial War Museum which has persuaded her to write her war-time memories. "I'm about half way there!" she said.

The mother of three daughters, she has eight grand children and eight great grandchildren.

For many years, Mrs Pringle was a leading member of Pickering Dramatic and Operatic Society, and is still a member of the choir of All Saints, Kirkbymoorside.

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